Turning pennies into goodies!

There is a new challenge at NGS - alter a container, collect loose change in it, and at the end of 2010, spend that $ on art supplies. To make a fresh start, I rounded up all the loose change lying around the house - can't start a 2010 money box with pre-2010 money! I turned this:

into this at my favorite stamp store, Absolutely Everything:

I got some things I've wanted to try out - grunge paper, perfect pearls, an ATC frame, and of course, STAMPS! AE is so amazing - and they indeed have absolutely everything !



So, now with all of the spare change jars empty, ready to take on the challenge of altering a container to store the new stash of money. My son-in-law's family calls these containers for mad money "foxy pockets" - WHAT??? My daughter and I roll our eyes whenever we hear this - seems a bit risque, like stashing away money for the kind of purchases that get you into the local paper's police log! Even funnier is that my SIL's family are salt-of-the -earth types, not likely to be involved in sketchy business of any kind.


But I digress; back to the challenge. I started with a tube from those vinyl wall sayings. Another challenge at NGS is the Julia Andrus' book study, starting with luminous paste paper. Since I was down to just a few sad colors of pearlex, I wasn't crazy about the colors I got, but liked the texture. I laid a piece of black paper over the paste and made a "copy" - much better! I used that piece to cover the bottom of the tube. I had a huge bag of plastic silver buttons from my friend, Shiela - neither of us could figure out what to do with them! The "bling" seemed perfect for this project. I added an image of a vintage beauty and a quote. Used sequin waste to stencil the top and my mad-money bank is ready! This is way more tricked-out than my usual style, but fun!

Tag Class!

Checked off one of my New Year Resolutions - attend paper arts class. This weekend I went to a class based on 3 of Tim Holtz's 2009 Christmas tags. His tags are gorgeous and more involved than most house renovations!! For example, the flower on the tag below over 20 steps. I have tried a few on my own and love the was he keeps layering and adding - I do believe his motto should be, "There's no success like excess".

The class was fun. Being me, I was worried that I'd be way out of my league, but that was not the case. I was able to keep up and enjoyed it - in fact, I may be adding "taking classes" to my list of paper-related addictions.

The first tag we made was by far the most complicated as it involved that multi-step flower! It is amazing - take 3 flat paper 6 petal flower shapes, color, cut,bend,twist, clip,glue and stickle - may I present "the rose"! Frankly, it's not something I'm not likely to make very often as it was a production and they do sell lovely flowers, already put together. But, then again, the instructor told about one she made with text stamped onto the flowers before assembly - hmm, anything stamped with text is intriguing and I may give that a whirl. We also made the gold trim, using a paper punch on white card stock, then embossing with gold - this is a technique I'll definitely be using. Of course, it means I need to buy a punch.

The background on this tag is a great technique - stamp the flourish with acrylic paint (add gold paint dauber to wish-list), heat set and then rub tag with distress inks - fast and fantastic! The circle embellishments are easy and I may try them with the wonderful watch- glass pieces from my friend, Shiela. Again the gold trim made with a punch and gold embossing powder - beautiful!

Love this background technique as well - smoosh alcohol inks on craft sheet, spritz with water and lay tag onto sheet - it picks up the inks with wonderful dribbles and splotches. Add some text stamping, flourishes and a cut-out butterfly (I do have a thing about butterflies, finding them a bit creepy, but tried not to create a scene in the class over it)! Because this is Tim's style, add glittered flourishes, words, leaves - he does not believe in the "less is more" approach!

Calendar Page Meets 2010 Resoultion

I've been making decorated calendars for a few years, but this year's are a bit late - probably because I bragged about having my Christmas cards finished in October! My revised goal for the calendars is to get them mailed before the end of January. To make up for the short-fall for 2010, I did decorate the January 2011 page !

This page is one of my favorites. I started with some artist paper for the background, then used chalk ink to do the faux torn paper technique demonstrated on this site. I didn't do the over stamping because I carefully positioned the paper so the printed text was heavier on the bottom, eliminating the need to additional stamping.

The stamp is one of Tim Holtz's fantastic Ideology line. I love the vintage, shabby chic look of his stamps. I stamped it on white card stock, trimmed it closely and then mounted on more white card stock, then a piece of blue.

Then I added a bit of ribbon and some "paper reinforcements" made of mica.

I printed the quote in old typewriter style font that matched the vintage feel of the image. (I love fonts , but that's another post entirely).

In thinking about the quote, I realized that it is the major heading for all my 2010 resolutions . Whether it's personal, professional, artistic , think being the best you can is what sums up my list of resolutions. It still helps to have the details of how that might happen, so guess I won't throw away my list of specifics! I need direction and baby-steps in this goal to be the best version of myself.

The bathroom is done!

We've finally finished the bathroom. I should have taken "before" pictures. The initial plan was to tile the floor and repaint the walls only. The floor was dated linoleum, the sink cabinet particle board making it a sad, tired little room! Once the throne and sink were removed for tiling, the renovation train had left the station and we were powerless to slow it down!

The redo was a family effort - Ethan did a fantastic job on the tiles- ripping out the sub floor, laying cement board and perfectly laying the lovely new tiles. I love the color - an ocean-inspired swirl of green and blue. Kate's gift of the fantastic hooks inspired the colors and shabby-chic meets French-county theme. The Captain did the lighting, floorboards and hook installation. I did the bossing, cleaning up and the painting.

The Captain thought we should move the sink (you see how the project kept getting more and more complicated). Then it seemed silly to put that sad sink back in. We searched for a sink cabinet and were faced with two options - inexpensive (wood-like substance held together with plastic plugs) or something beyond the budget for the entire project! After one disappointing shopping trip, I thought of the unused hutch in our basement and had a "eureka" moment - solid oak, in good shape, lots of storage - YIPPEE - a fantastic cabinet without spending any money! This meant we could splurge on the faucet - a lovely farm-style pump affair. We had intended to set a sink into the hutch, but liked this look better, plus it meant we didn't have to sacrifice the drawers.

Same thought process happened with the toilet - once it was out, how could it go back? My friend, Shiela, visited this fall and told me we needed a taller throne - and she was right. Plus, the new one has a smaller, taller tank, somehow making it look old-fashioned.

The window - mirror over the sink is special. It came from my dear old friend Barbara's farm. When she had the chicken coops dismantled, the current owners ( good friends Doug and Jodi), rescued one of the windows for me. I had the glass replaced with mirrors and now it has found it's perfect home!

If you're looking for me, I'm probably in the bathroom, enjoying the new view.

Switchplate upgrade

The bathroom renovation continues. Today I fixed the switchplates. They started out as those lovely cheap-o plastic things. A swipe of gesso, some scraps of art papers, a rubber stamp or two and an embellishment - much better than yellow plastic thingies! A couple of coats of Perfect Paper Gloss protects the paper from moisture and smudgy fingers.

I'm working my way through all the switchplates in the house. It doesn't take very long and is such an improvement over the ugly ones or the very pricey ones!

Well, here it is, blog post number 1 !

New Year resolutions are looming large - making them is easy, keeping them not so much.

One of mine for this year is to eat more responsibly, a la Michael Pollan's recommendations. Practically speaking, our ( since I do most of the cooking, my resolutions for what we eat are also the default resolutions of the Captain as well), resolutions are to eat less, more vegetables and less meat, meat and eggs grown humanely , and less processed food. This last one means I have to give up my "fat-free" half and half , having recently discovered that it's second ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup!!

The Captain sent me this great link:

http://www.wspa-usa.org/pages/2481_eat_humane.cfm

You can enter your grocery store, select a product and find out which are grown humanely. This week my focus is the egg and avoiding eggs from chickens raised in those horrid cages, overfed and over-medicated!

We recently had some very fresh eggs from free-to-roam the Vermont country-side chickens. They had amazingly brilliant yellow yolks, almost orange. No more sad chickens producing eggs for us!

The Captain wants to raise chickens, mostly to amuse our adorable grandaughter. We're investigating some way of containing the birdies while still allowing for wandering about. I've agreed to this chicken venture as long as we get some that produce those beautiful speckled eggs.